Weston 2014 Female Athlete of the Year: Patty Atkinson

After beginning her athletic career on the soccer pitch, Atkinson ditched the cleats in soccer, and lacrosse, for those in cross-country and outdoor track by her junior year at Weston High.

In addition, she annually swapped both her soccer cleats and then running shoes to lace up ice hockey skates for the Wayland-Weston girls program in the winter.

Despite this non-traditional mix of sports, Atkinson was named the Weston Town Crier Female Athlete of the Year for her accomplishments on the course, ice and track.

"It’s really nice to get noticed for something," Atkinson said. "A lot of people get noticed for academics, so it’s nice to get noticed for athletics too, because sports have been my entire life so it’s nice for it to mean something to other people as well."

Atkinson wasn’t interested in playing with Barbie Dolls growing up. Sports were always her passion.

She played soccer, basketball, softball, tennis and almost every sport in the book. In third grade, after attempting to become a figure skater, her father signed her up to take hockey skating lessons with the Weston-Wayland youth program.

The transition from figure skating, however, wasn’t seamless.

"I actually started playing hockey because of the outfit," Atkinson admitted. "I used to figure skate and pretend to be a hockey player but the skates are so different so when they put me out there with the other girls who knew how to skate in hockey skates, I couldn’t skate at all.

"I ended up crying. I didn’t want to go back but I ended up going back and I started getting better."

She also started getting better at lacrosse in fourth grade. A few years later, she joined the ultra-competitive club lacrosse team, Revolution, in high school. She played soccer, hockey and lacrosse through her first two years at Weston High.

But during the spring of her sophomore year, one of her best friends put an idea into her head.

"Zoe Snow got me to run cross-country, so I quit soccer," Atkinson said. "I really liked it, and they were all like you should do spring track too it’s so much fun. But I was like ‘no, no I want to play lacrosse’ because I thought I was going to play in college."

However, after her junior hockey season, Atkinson started to really miss the thrill of running. So that January, Atkinson sat down with her father and had a lengthy conversation regarding her future.

After some time, Atkinson decided to do something she thought she’d never actually do.

Stop playing lacrosse.

Once she made that decision, Atkinson quickly emailed Weston track coach, John Monz, about the possibility of running in college.

Once Monz emailed Atkinson back that another school’s track coach had told him, just a few days prior, that "if that Atkinson girl ever ran track, she would be an absolute beast in the 800" —she was convinced.

But the decision didn’t come without some angst.

"It was honestly the hardest decision I ever had to make," Atkinson said. "I used to play wall ball (lacrosse) for two-and-a-half hours a day and wake up early to play every single weekend in the summer. I never thought I’d ever fall out of love with lacrosse but ultimately when you do something for so long and then try something new and fall in love with that, you want to do that."

So she did.

She made three Dual County League All-Star teams in her four seasons over two years with Weston cross-country and track teams. She was a member of the 4x800 relay in track with Snow, Read Allen and Jillian Howard.

"She contributed a lot in both seasons," Monz said. "She was an athlete and was a kid who helped make the feeling around the team real close and tight-knit. She was a real big part of making that kind of good feeling spread throughout the girls team."

Her proudest moment came when she broke the 20-minute mark in a 5K cross-country race her first season.

"I did it pretty early on and actually broke 20 minutes the same day Zoe Snow broke it," Atkinson said. "It was such a milestone for the both of us and we did it together."

The Wayland-Weston girls hockey program didn’t win many games during her freshman season with the team. But her proudest hockey moment was when the WarCats made the tournament for the first time in team history during her sophomore season.

"We had never gotten there as a program," Atkinson said. "Our program was so small and was really struggling to get girls to play for so long, so for us to make the tournament was such a big deal."

During his first season as head coach this season, Kevin Cleary thought Atkinson was a big reason for the team’s success.

"By far one of the best kids I’ve ever coached," Cleary said. "As a people person, captain, leader, I mean all the superlatives. She is the consummate team player, a great captain, and she just gets it."

And nothing proved that more than a game against Algonquin this past winter.

With Wayland-Weston’s only goaltender missing due to illness, the WarCats needed someone to step up between the pipes.

"She didn’t even know how to put the pads on," Cleary said of Atkinson. "But that’s Patty, that’s the way she is."

So despite allowing three quick shots to scoot past her, Atkinson didn’t allow a goal in the final two periods and helped Wayland-Weston muster a tie against a very good Algonquin squad.

"Patty stepped up to the plate and volunteered but had never played goalie before," Cleary said. "It was a perfect example of her leadership. I know she put her goals and aspirations to the side for the team."

In addition to being an unselfish teammate, Atkinson is a fierce competitor. Even with her best friend.

"Oh I’m so competitive," Atkinson said. "I compete with everything. With Zoe we’d always say ‘Lets see who can drink this water bottle fastest’ or ‘who can swim the fastest.’"

"When I think back of Patty I’ll think of her as a competitor and a hockey player," McGrath said. "But she really excelled on the trail, ice and track… She was always one of the first ones out there and one of the last ones to leave. I was very impressed with that because you don’t see that a lot these days, but she was one of those kids that worked hard and it obviously paid dividends for her."

Atkinson hopes it continues to pay off in the fall when she heads to Colorado College, where she will run track all three seasons.

She won’t mind if the brief winter season (only three weeks) proves to be a little bit of a respite.

"I snowboard as well," Atkinson said. "So if I don’t do much (running) in the winter at least I can snowboard."

With snowboarding being another non-traditional sport, it suits Atkinson well. She didn’t let tradition confine her sporting experience in high school, so why start now?

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